Balls.

One of our hot water pipes is cracked. There is a cloud of steam arising from this small hole in the downstairs bathroom. We found one of the cats in the basement and it was warm and apparently been huddled next to the steam leak like one of the ocean-floor microorganism.

My brother was in middle school choir and his choir was to march in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I don't think it was the actual parade - probably a rehearsal, as I would've remembered if the incident I were about to describe was on Thanksgiving Day - but my brother was late for an event because he was busy in the restroom and took like 45 minute shits during this point of his life. Already 10 minutes late, I finally heard him wash his hands, open the bathroom door, and bolt out of the house while wearing his "I Hear America Singing" red sweatshirt. Now I was home alone, and I went upstairs to use the restroom but it was clogged with my brother's toilet paper. I flushed the toilet about 5 times, which of course caused it to flood.

Water streamed out of the top of the bowl and started to drip downstairs onto the clean clothes in the laundry room below. For reasons I don't understand the lid never shut on the toilet so water kept flowing out. I ran outside and knowing no other recourse knocked awkwardly at the door of my next door neighbors', the Iranian Jews.

Mind you there are only like 45 Iranian Jews in the world, six of whom were my next door neighbors and one other being Navid from the new "90210." So of these 45 left in the world I am greeted by the mother, who speaks poor English and who I insist must come to my house. Following me she runs up to our bathroom and sees the puddle of poop and pee water. She grabs a handful of towels, and throws them right onto the floor. Then she makes the wise decision (me being 9 at the time was unable to make) of shutting off the water flow to the toilet by shutting off the valve behind the bowl. So then we stood there in the piss soaked towels and she told me to wash my hands, and I did. I don't think she had been in my house before and I don't think came in there again. My father made me redo the laundry. The Iranian Jews moved out on a random day. Then the raccoons took over their house, and the heater almost exploded, and the grass grew a foot high.